Beyoncé’s new live album Homecoming features a bonus track of her cover to Frankie Beverly & Maze’s single “Before I Let Go,” which has now turned into a viral challenge. Beverly sat down with Billboard and opened up about the cover and spoke on Beyoncé’s influence, saying, “She’s done so much, this is one of the high points of my life.”
Beverly shared that Beyonce is a great friend of his; however, she kept the cover under wraps until a few weeks before Homecoming’s release. “She’s a great friend of mine, but I didn’t know she was going to do this. I was hearing stuff, but I didn’t even want to approach her about it. She kept it quiet until her people called me one day maybe a week or two ago. When they played it, that’s when I heard the first draft of it, and I was blown away. It’s a blessing,” he said.
Frankie Beverly’s relationship with Beyonce goes back to when she was a teenager, before her incomparable stardom. He stated, “We met years ago. I think she was in her teens at the time, if that. I guess she really liked Maze and the song even then, so her mother brought her to our show at the Houston Rodeo. She wasn’t a big hit star then, but we wound up working together a few times since and she’s always been very, very nice to me.”
He continued, praising Beyonce as well as expressing how much her sample has directly impacted him. “Other people have done my songs, but the way she did this was in a class of its own. I’m hearing from people I haven’t heard from in years. She’s done something that has affected my life. I haven’t even spoken to a publication like yours in quite a while. So it’s changed things around for me.”
